Argosy, September 1955 — page 23: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

STAR OVER FRISCO 21 cool path before them like a bottled firefly. But when they came out into the thoroughfares it seemed a little conspicuous, so Humphrey slipped it in his pocket. At the door of her boarding-house they lingered as if parting were for ever. “When? ”’ ‘“ "Tomorrow night?” “T can’t wait till then.” “Neither can I.” ‘““ Here, you keep the star, darling.”’ “No, you. You found it.” ‘“No, you, because it matches your eyes.” “All right, just till tomorrow night.”’ Humphrey traded her the star for a kiss, and considered himself shrewder than the characters who got Manhattan for a hatful of beads. Sunday was practically always taken up with bettering yourself, looking over the week’s mistakes with a view to constructive criticism. But today Humphrey woke with a delicious languor that he couldn’t recognize, till last night came back. It brought him out of bed with a buoyed-up feeling and the name Pearl Rembrandt armouring him like a password or a charm. ‘Too restless for his morning exercises with the dumb- bells, he took the lift down to the hall, and over a chicken salad sandwich and a cup of coffee in the cafeteria wondered how to kill the long day till tonight. On the bus out to Golden Gate Park, he carefully followed the conversation in the seat behind him. Little things like that would help him figure out his customers whenever he got to be acounterman. It was a pair of women talking, and Humphrey studied them casually from the corner of his eye. But they must have noticed because they began making obvious cracks. He haughtily ignored them all the rest of the way. Dropping off the bus at the bandstand, Humphrey cut through the grove of decapitated trees and passed between the pink, priest-headed lions of the De Young Museum. Inside, he kept pretty much to the least crowded exhibits, examining the suits of old armour and imagining himself in them, the personal effects of famous historical personages. After a while he passed a room with glass cases filled with rocks and things. Humphrey didn’t ordinarily specialize in just plain fossils unless they had a historical factor to them. But the one in the centre was interesting enough to have a closer look. It was about the size of your fist or so, pitted and black so that it comiclbooks.conn